Oniisanbomber's Blog

Japan Trip – March 2025 – Part 5 (Sapporo)

19th of June, 2025

After Kobe, it was time to go back to Tokyo.

No, not because it was time for me to fly home. It was time for me to fly even further away!

A friend and I would meet at Narita international airport, and from there fly to Sapporo. From Sapporo, we will rent a car and drive to Asahikawa. Since I was the only one with a driver’s license, I will be driving the whole way.

If you’re planning on driving in Japan, read this blog post! There are some important considerations if you want to drive in Japan. If you’re not careful, you might not be able to drive at all even if you bring your driver’s license and an international license.

It is because of everything leading up to it.

First of all, when I left Himeji to go back to Tokyo, the train before mine was the famous Hello Kitty Shinkansen. Unfortunately it wasn’t my train, but I was still able to get some pictures of it.

I checked back into my hotel in Higashi Shinjuku, for 25,000 yen a night. My credit card is bleeding.

On the morning I was supposed to leave Tokyo, I woke up early and because I am an old man, I opened up Facebook. I got a notification on my timeline saying that the VERY FIRST cherry blossoms had bloomed in Tokyo. The very first two trees next to Oshiage SkyTree have bloomed. Normally, early March was too early for sakura trees, but I was in luck this time. I didn’t plan on seeing any cherry blossoms because I purposefully decided to come just before the cherry blossom season to avoid the tourist crush and the exorbitant hotel and flight prices. Man, I felt so lucky.

If calculated if I checked out of the hotel right now (luckily I had already packed the night before, all bags ready to go) and took a taxi to Oshiage station, then I would be able to see the trees and still have enough time to catch the Narita Airport express from Oshiage station.

So that’s what I decided to do.

I rushed out of the hotel and took a taxi to Oshiage SkyTree. Fortunately, the taxi driver knew what trees I was talking about and drove me straight there.

Note: if you do not speak Japanese, the taxi drivers do not speak much English. You need to use a translation app or show them on Google maps where you want to go.

I took some pictures of the cherry blossoms. Take a look! There were a bunch of tourists and locals all trying to get some precious shots of the cherry blossoms and the SkyTree together. I imitated the shots of some professional photographers who were there.

Afterwards, I caught the Narita Airport Express from Oshiage station.

At Narita, I had to walk a long way to the correct terminal (forgot which terminal it was), but the walkway was decorated with Pokemon art. No pictures, I’m afraid.

The flight I booked was with JetStar. Because it is a budget airline, they are VERY strict with their baggage allowance.

I was overweight in all aspects, even though I checked my baggage weight using the hotel scale, so I had to throw away some stuff.

Getting on the plane was tough too, because JetStar WILL check carry on allowance right before the boarding gate.

Note to self: don’t buy so much stuff in Akihabara next time.

I write this knowing that next time I will again buy way too much stuff.

After my friend and I made it to Sapporo airport (New Chitose international airport), we went to the rental car company counter, and from there we took a bus to the rental car place.

Now this is where it gets tricky.

Japan accepts driver’s licenses from a very limited number of countries, and does NOT accept the international driver’s license most countries issue because it is NOT a signatory of the Geneva convention that established the international driver’s license thing.

So how can you drive in Japan without a Japanese license?

First you need to check if your license qualifies.

Then you need to go to a designated place in your home country and get a certified translation of your license. Note that the Japanese embassy does NOT provide such services. You need to carefully research which office or organization in your country provides translations that the Japanese authorities will accept.

The car we were provided with was a blue Nissan Note.

For the first time in my life, I was going to be driving on the left side of the road while sitting on the right side of the car.

I did some circles in the parking lot just to kind of get used to driving on this side.

It felt like learning how to walk again. It was really tough to estimate the size of the car and get a feel for it.

But overall I think I’m a pretty good driver (nowhere near a professor race car driver, but I did pass my driving test on the first try, so make of that what you will).

We got on the highway and this is where problems began.

I had no idea what the speed limit in Japan was.

I asked my friend to google it, but just in case, I always stayed behind a local car.

If the car in front drove fast, I drove fast. If he slowed down, I slowed down.

Another thing: it was March in Hokkaido. We lost daylight pretty quickly. Very soon, I was driving on the highway in total darkness. And the worst part wasn’t even that. Outside of the national expressways, the roads in Hokkaido are really…shit.

Bumpy, old, poorly maintained and full of potholes. As someone driving for the first time on the left side of the road, and especially in the rural countryside of Hokkaido, it was terrifying and exhausting.

The worst thing was when we got off the national expressway, there were few lights. Sometimes we drove in almost total darkness, on unfamiliar bumpy roads, on a side of the road that felt alien to me.

When we took a turn and drove into the mountains, my friend asked if I was sure that there was a hotel up here. I said no idea, but the GPS is telling us to go here. We followed twisty quiet roads in the darkness until we finally came across a cluster of…love hotels.

There was no way we would stay there. There were some cars parked underneath a love hotel. It seems like people in Asahikawa get busy at night.

We continued to drive.

Finally, finally – we arrived at Takago Onsen.

It billed itself as a retro onsen, a throwback to an earlier era. It had pinball machines, a library – basically it was very old school.

And it was a Sunday. Surprisingly, even though it was quite late, there were a lot of families there. According to my friend, there are a lot of old Japanese houses that do not have a bath in them, so Japanese families will make trips to these types of community onsen baths to take a bath.

Children and adults sat together, taking a bath and then reading books together. Some kids played with the pinball machines. Some adults smoked in the smoking room. Some quietly read manga.

It really felt like a scene out of a different time period.

A simpler time. A better time.

Such a scene would be impossible to see in the big cities in Japan. It seems that outside of the big cities, in more remote places like Asahikawa, the old sense of community has been preserved.

Even though I wasn’t a part of this community, it made me happy just to witness this scene.

Our room was relatively small, but after experiencing the small rooms in Tokyo, any room in Hokkaido felt huge in comparison.

Also another thing. The car gave me a five star rating! I guess I must have driven really well to warrant such a rating. I didn’t even know that cars could rate YOUR driving.

I know this might be odd of me, but please indulge me.

I want to write a short review of the Nissan Note we drove in Hokkaido.

First of all, it is a very basic car, but in a good way. It is blue, it is fast and the fuel consumption is great!

Since it is a hybrid, it barely makes any noise at all. The acceleration is fast and smooth. Much, much smoother than the automatic diesel Audi I usually drive.

The trunk has enough space for luggage for two people. Although anything more than two large suitcases and two bags will be a struggle.

I can’t emphasize enough how smooth it is to drive this car. I wish they sold this car in more places. Even though it is a hybrid, it had no trouble with the biting temperatures of Hokkaido. It handled all the bumps on the road with ease.

But there are also negatives.

The metal feels quite thin and the door sounds follow. I suppose that is expected from a budget car. But for a budget car it drives so well. It drives better than an Audi, in my opinion.

Okay, that is all for the car review.

The onsen bath itself was incredible.

They had ice-cold and hot baths of varying temperatures and minerals and so on. There are tons of different baths for you to explore. There’s even an electric bath that makes you go a bit numb. There is also a Jacuzzi-like bath.

For dinner, simply buy a ticket and give it to the staff in the restaurant. The ticket machine only has Japanese on it and the staff do not really speak English, so don’t bother them with your dietary preferences. Just press a button and pray that you will like it (and you probably will).

Next: Exploring Asahikawa in earnest.

—Oniisanbomber